16:9 clips in a 4:3 timeline back to 16:9 in FCP5?
 

I'm wondering if anyone could help me with a little issue.
I have a bunch of footage shot on an XL2 and I had to edit it in the standard 4:3 timeline so I could print the final project back to MiniDV tape for a presentation. It worked perfectly and letterboxed the 16:9 footage properly. Now that I have this long elaborate sequence edited and rendered in a 4:3 timeline, is there a way to get the sequence to work in a 16:9 timeline? I've tried simply selecting the anamorphic option and all it does is compress the already letterboxed footage rather than removing the letterbox. Thanks in advance.

Hi Joe, what I would do is copy and paste your entire edit into a new 16:9 sequence, then select all and right click remove attributes. The only thing that you want to remove is the distort property. This should scale everything correctly.

I think Nate's solution should do the trick for you. But the next time you need to do something like this, edit everything in anamorphic 16:9 for starters. Then when you're finished with the edit, create a new 4:3 sequence and drop your 16:9 sequence into it. That will letterbox everything while still preserving your original widescreen version.

Thanks for the tip, I tried doing something like that, but I changed the anamorphic properties for the sequence rather than the clips themselves. I'll try it when I get home.

I think I tried dropping a 16:9 sequence into a new 4:3 timeline before, but it just squeezed the image and didn't letterbox it. That's why I created I created everything for this one in a 4:3 timeline. But again, I didn't change the attribute for the clips themselves, so that must've been my problem.

Thanks again.

With Graphics
 

Boyd, (or anyone)

Any thoughts on this:

I'll soon be editing a piece shot in native 16:9 DVCAM. The client wants the final presentation in 4:3 letterbox with pop up text in the letterboxed area. Now, when I import an anamorphic clip and drop it into a 4:3 timeline FCP seems to automatically adjust the distort function by 33.33% (effectively creating a letterboxed version in the sequence.)

Would you go ahead and edit the full piece in this manner OR do all the cutting in 16:9 then drop down to 4:3 for the addition of graphics? I'm afraid I'll need to go with 4:3 from the "getgo" because of the need to comp in graphics as I do the actual edit. 99.9% sure of that now that I type it.

Anyway, my MAIN question is: Is there any noticeable resolution drop by taking anamorphic 16:9 footage into a "distorted" 4:3 timeline.

Anything I'm missing here?

Thanks!